


Now is the Start

by greymcdreamysgh



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-08
Packaged: 2021-03-12 19:42:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28640943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greymcdreamysgh/pseuds/greymcdreamysgh
Summary: MDZB. A short multi-chapter fic. Exploring parenthood/child relationships in a series of moments from their first year as a family of four. "Kiss with a mouth full of shooting stars all the lost and the broken parts." Written in 2013 and crossposted from ff.net. Incomplete.
Relationships: Meredith Grey & Derek Shepherd, Meredith Grey/Derek Shepherd
Kudos: 8





	1. Chapter 1

_Hey, do you hear, do you hear that sound?_   
_It's the sound of the lost gone found,_   
_It's the sound of a mute gone loud,_   
_It's the sound of a new start._

* * *

At 1:30 in the morning, Meredith groans and reaches for the PCA pump next to the bed. She has been dozing in and out of sleep for a few hours, and so has Bailey, but Derek is so drained, so on edge, from everything that has happened today that he can't sleep even though he knows he should.

"Morphine," Meredith croaks. Her hand searches for the pump but can't find it in the darkness of the room.

He jumps up, and finds it for her, nestled in the sheets with her drainage tubes and her IV. He places it into her hand and watches her click the pump six times, even though she knows that won't make it go any faster or give her any more medicine than what she needs.

"Ok," he soothes. "You're ok. What do you need?"

"Drugs," she says in a hoarse whisper.

"Ok, they're coming," he says, rubbing her arm.

It takes a few minutes for the pain relief to kick in, but he can tell when it does as her face finally relaxes.

"How do you feel?" he asks.

She grimaces and shakes her head.

"That good, huh?"

Even though her eyes are still closed, she laughs a little, and when he closes his fingers around hers, she squeezes back.

"You did good," he says quietly. "Everything's ok now."

She swallows and nods.

"Want some water?"

She nods again, so he takes the plastic cup with a straw in it from her bedside table and brings it to her lips. She opens her eyes, takes a few sips, and then asks in a voice hoarse from exhaustion and intubation, "Where's Zola?"

"She's in one of the on-call rooms," he says. "Alex was going to take her to the old house for the night, but apparently a tree came through the front window earlier, so there's water and glass all over the living room. And the ferry isn't running right now because of the storm so he couldn't take her to our house."

"A tree came through the window?"

"Yeah, it's been a pretty bad storm," he says.

"Alex is ok?"

"Yeah, he examined Bailey in the NICU. He says congratulations, by the way."

Meredith smiles and nods. "He's ok?" she asks. It's something she has been asking for hours, and he knows that she is talking about the baby now, not Alex.

"He's doing great," he assures her. Bailey is tiny and fragile at just about six pounds, but even though he's early, he is healthy. "I think one of the nurses will probably bring him in soon."

Sure enough, they hear a soft knock at the door a few minutes later, and the nurse wheels the baby into the room.

"This little guy wants his mama," she says. "How are you feeling? Do you want to try nursing him again?"

"Was he crying?" Meredith asks.

"No, but he's awake and it's about that time that he would want to eat anyway. Need some help?"

Derek watches as the nurse scoops Bailey out of the bassinet and holds him while Meredith unfastens one side of her gown. She places the baby in Meredith's arms, but it's only a few seconds before Meredith winces and admits, "I can't hold him like this."

"Too much weight on your incisions?" the nurse asks knowingly, taking the baby back.

Meredith nods.

It takes some maneuvering, but they finally settle Bailey on his back on a pillow at Meredith's side, facing her but without any of his weight actually on her. It takes much more work than he thought it would, but when Meredith looks up at Derek in relief as the baby starts to eat, Derek smiles at her.

He feels like he's in the way and that they don't need him for this part, so he holds back and lets the nurse help her while he watches, enthralled. "Getting the hang of it?" he asks.

"I think so," Meredith replies, but she's so wrapped up in their son, staring into his eyes and smoothing her palm over his head, that she doesn't really pay him that much attention. "It feels like he's eating a lot."

"That's good," Derek says, taking his seat next to the bed back now that the nurse doesn't need to be there anymore. "He needs to get big and strong."

The nurse stays for a few minutes more to make sure that everything is going smoothly, but then she leaves the three of them alone. When another knock comes at the door, and someone lets themselves into the room, Meredith looks up. She is probably expecting Cristina, but it's Miranda instead. She has tears in her eyes, and as soon as Derek notices this, something sinks deep in the pit of his stomach. It is the second time he has seen Miranda like this today, and something tells him that this time, everything is not fine.

"Oh, I'm sorry," she says quickly, seeing Meredith feeding their son, and she turns to leave.

Her voice is so warbly though that even Meredith's attention is ripped away from the baby for a moment. "What?" she asks hurriedly. "What's the matter?"

Miranda tells them with trembling breaths that she has just left the ICU, where Richard is post-operative and unconscious, with second and third degree burns, plus other damage from a major electrical shock. She, Avery, and a few other surgeons had been able to restart his heart, debride some of the burns, and repair some of the damage. But his accident was bad enough that right now, it's just a matter of waiting and seeing if he wakes up again.

Derek is so surprised, so-for lack of a better word-shocked that he is speechless. He glances over at Meredith and he can tell that she too is in disbelief. Her hand has stilled on the crown of their son's head, and she stares at Miranda, unblinking with tears in her eyes.

"I don't understand," she finally says. Her voice comes out shaky too.

"One of the techs found him in the basement," Miranda says, pulling herself together a little to give the details. "It had something to do with the power going out and then coming back on. I don't really know what."

"What was he doing down there?" Meredith asks quietly.

Miranda shakes her head, and brushes a few tears out of her eyes. He has seen it a million times before, so he doesn't know why it has taken him this long to recognize it now. But it becomes clear to Derek in this moment, as Meredith and Miranda stare at each other, that he is witnessing the victim's next of kin trying to process the horrible news of their loved one's probable imminent demise.

Miranda's reaction makes sense to him. Richard took this woman under his wing from day one. He has always loved her for her talent and her moxy. She is his protégé, and for a long time, she was the only one in this hospital who had his back as much as he had hers.

But the waters of Richard and Meredith's relationship have always been rough and, frankly, Derek has never understood the two of them. He has seen Richard scream at her, threaten to fire her _, actually_ fire her. Derek himself has stood before her as she told him that Richard was absolutely not to be allowed at their wedding. He sees them both manipulate each other and play the Ellis Grey card whenever they need to in order to get what they want. But he has also watched her cover up his drinking, and him take the fall for her dubious ethical decisions. Neither of them would do these things for nearly anyone else. Somehow, he is sure that despite everything, they love one another.

For a second, as he watches Meredith try to process all of this, he forgets that Richard is his friend too. He forgets how much he owes this man, and that without Richard offering him a job-in effect, throwing him a buoy when he was drowning-he never would have met Meredith. Right now, none of that matters, because of the expression on Meredith's face. Right now, he is filled with irrational frustration. It's enough to manage a newborn baby, and the pain from a c-section and splenectomy, without adding this in. He hates that the few hours of peace and control they had have been so quickly snatched away.

Meredith presses Miranda for details-everything from what his stats were in surgery to how extensive his burns are to what his heart rate is now. Miranda only has some of the answers, far below her usual standard. He half expects Meredith to ask for Richard's primary doctor to come here right now and brief her.

When Miranda leaves, presumably to go find the answers to these questions herself, both of them are so stunned that it doesn't occur to either of them to tell Miranda what they've decided to name their son.

Derek remains quiet as he looks up at Meredith. One of her arms cradles the baby, while the other holds his tiny hand, but she stares straight ahead, her eyes glistening.

She lets out a shaky breath, and when she turns to look at him, he has the strongest, almost inexplicable, feeling of déjà vu. For a second, even though he knows she is a grown woman, that she is a surgeon and a wife and a mother, and that it takes _so much_ to rattle Meredith Grey, he looks at her and is reminded so clearly of Amelia. He can't figure out why at first, but then it clicks into place.

He remembers the same expression on his sister's face once. It was thirty years ago, and a police officer had just told them that their father was dead. He remembers shaking his head, sitting next to Amy and staring the cop in the face like he was the biggest liar he had ever met. It was preposterous that his father could die. Impossible. He didn't believe it. Amy, though-Amy had sat there, wide-eyed and unblinking, terrified and rapt at the same time, as her world shifted underneath her and she crumbled.

* * *

Meredith never thought that this man was invincible. She of all people knows his faults. But it still is almost unbelievable to her that he could be lying in the hospital bed in front of her, barely clinging to life. He is awake, but not alert, doped up on morphine, snaked with tubes and wires and hardly responsive at all.

"Richard, it's Meredith," she says quietly. She's still in a hospital gown herself and rolled up next to his bed in a wheelchair. She doesn't know what to say to him really. When has she ever known what to say to him? For a minute, she feels so foolish. Why is she here at all?

He is the reason why her mother didn't want her, why her father has not been in her life for almost thirty years. He is a person who asks too much of her, who has always looked at her and been reminded of someone else, who treated her like his penance, like a charity case.

But he is also someone who nurtured her talent, believed in her skill, who encouraged her and taught her how to practice medicine. He has given her a home at this hospital, and a purpose. He has tried hard to care for her, to protect her, to love her. And she cannot stand the thought of him lying here alone, so here she is.

She remembers once, years ago, when she could almost still feel the harsh sting of Thatcher's open palm on her cheek, when she looked at this man and told him, in a wavering voice, "You are not my father."

And maybe she doesn't have a father. But Richard didn't walk away from her the way Thatcher did. He tried to help, to make sure that she was all right. And so it's equally true what she said to another man who pointed a gun at her heart: "I'm the closest thing he has to a daughter."

She has children now, so she understands that part of it a little bit better, the part about the way he might feel about her. For better or for worse, he is part of her family. For better or for worse, they are tied together. For better or for worse, they are the only people who really know what it feels like to be one of Ellis Grey's great failures. For better or for worse, he is one of the few people in this world who loves her despite the fact that she too can be selfish, defensive, stubborn, destructive, manipulative, and flawed sometimes. For better or worse, their relationship is for better or worse.

So she reaches out and lays her fingers gently over his. And when she does, he musters up the strength to turn his head and open his eyes. She can tell that he's in so much pain despite the morphine, so she's not even sure why she is telling him this except that she can't stand the silence. But she finds herself telling him anyway.

"I have a little boy now," she says. "His name is Bailey."

Richard closes his eyes for a second, and the hint of a smile turns the corners of his mouth. It's barely noticeable, but he nods his approval.

* * *

It's four days before Carolyn and Lizzie can make it out to Seattle. The storm has done some damage to the city's infrastructure, making travel a lot more difficult. Selfishly, though, Derek is a little thankful that the damage has given him time to get Meredith and the baby home from the hospital, and to give his family some time to adjust before hosting guests.

He offers to pick them up at the airport, but his mother refuses. They've just had a baby, she reminds them. She assures him that she and Lizzie will be able to figure out the ferry.

The knock at the front door comes so softly that he almost doesn't hear it. Meredith and Zola are napping in bed, and he—so deliriously tired himself—is dozing with Bailey on the couch. It takes him a moment to realize what is happening and to get up gingerly enough to keep Bailey asleep. For a second, he wonders why they didn't just ring the doorbell, but then he realizes that between the two of them, they've had enough kids to know that ringing the bell and possibly waking a sleeping newborn is probably the worst idea in the world.

When he opens the door, the greeting is entirely silent at first. His mother's eyes glisten as soon as she sees him with the baby. She covers her mouth with her fingertips and doesn't say a word.

He hugs Liz with his free arm and steps aside for them to both come in and leave their luggage at the door. For a minute or two, he just stands there and lets them peer at the sleeping baby in his arms.

"Meet Bailey Christopher Shepherd," he says before turning to the sleeping baby. "B, this is Nana and Aunt Liz."

Liz traces her fingertip lightly over Bailey's clenched fist.

"Hey, buddy," she whispers. "It's nice to meet you."

Carolyn doesn't say anything.

"Mom, you can talk," he finally says. "He won't wake up."

Carolyn shakes her head and wipes a few tears out of her eyes.

Liz laughs. "She couldn't talk even if she wanted to. Congratulations, Derek. He's beautiful."

"Thanks. How was your flight?" he asks, moving toward the kitchen. "Do you want something to drink?"

Carolyn clears her throat and pulls herself together. "Derek, we can get our own drinks," she says. "Sit down and relax. You just had a baby."

"Mom, Meredith had the baby," Liz says, rolling her eyes. "Derek, if there was ever any question of you being the favorite child…."

"Liz," Carolyn says. "Shush. Where are the glasses?"

Derek tells her which cabinet they're in as he settles back down on the couch with Bailey on his chest and Liz takes a seat in one of the chairs opposite him.

Carolyn brings three glasses of ice water into the living room and sits down next to Derek on the couch. "How is Meredith?" she asks.

"She's getting there," he says. "It's a long story, but she had a rough delivery, and the storm didn't really help things. She's sleeping with Zola right now but I'm sure they'll be up soon. Zola will at least."

"Poor thing," Carolyn says. "Well, we can help with whatever you need. Put us to work."

"I can't wait to see Zola," Liz says. "I'm trying to lock up 'favorite aunt' by the end of this visit."

"As long as you're willing to have a tea party with her and read her an endless amount of books, you'll have it in the bag," he says.

"Done. I miss when my kids were little. It'll be nice to get a little dose of baby while we're out here," Liz says.

"You'll probably leave thankful that your kids are all potty trained and sleeping through the night," he replies with a chuckle.

They fall silent for a moment as Bailey shifts in Derek's arms and yawns. Derek stays as still as he can so as not to disturb him, and he settles back down.

"It's weird to see you with kids," Liz says after awhile.

"Liz, you've seen me with kids a million times," he says. "You've got five of them."

Liz shakes her head. "Your own kids. It's weird. In a good way."

He smiles. It's been four days, but he still can't believe that he has two kids now. "It is good," he agrees.

"I think he looks like you," Liz says. "Actually, I kind of think he looks like Amelia."

"Really?" Derek asks. "I think he looks like Meredith. Same nose. But the other day, I swear to God, he reminded me so much of Zola. Just this look in his eyes."

"The two of them are going to have you wrapped around their fingers," Liz says.

"Oh, they already do," he replies. "Meredith runs this house; Zola already knows that I'm a softie. I'm sure it won't take him long to figure it out either." He turns to Carolyn. "What do you think, Ma? Who does he look like?"

She studies her grandson for a moment before she answers. "I think he looks like Meredith," she replies. "But you? Derek, you look exactly like your father."


	2. Chapter 2

_You don't need a thing, you already know  
You are right as you are_

* * *

Both Baileys are tightly wound.

Miranda is freaking out about Richard, and is practically living at the hospital. And their son…well, their son seems to be freaking out about everything, keeping them both up most of the night for the past few days. Derek is exhausted, but in a way, he is grateful to his son because Bailey is the only thing keeping Meredith out of the hospital right now.

As tired as Derek is, Meredith is beyond exhausted and still in pain, though she won't admit it. As Richard's proxy, she's been on the phone with Miranda a few times a day, directing the other doctors on what to do, and conferencing on the pros and cons of every possible course of action. Then, because Derek has to go into the hospital anyway to deal with the storm's fallout, she directs him to make sure that her instructions are being followed.

After the first day of their visit, Lizzie starts going with him to the hospital. They're short-staffed because many of the staff members are dealing with severe storm damage on their properties, and they can't get into work. Carolyn assures them that she can keep things under control at home, so they both leave for a few hours a day.

They take the ferry across the Puget Sound to downtown Seattle. Even a few days after the storm, it's still remarkably almost empty. He feels guilty for being there at all, for enjoying the quiet and the crisp air of the early morning and the feeling of his fingers wrapped around a warm cup of coffee. Meredith keeps telling him to go, but even though it's only for a few hours, he wants to be with her and the kids.

Lizzie stares off into the distance, taking in the views of the water as Bainbridge Island gets smaller and smaller. He considers her for a moment. He has been missing Mark a lot over the past few days. He would have been a good person to go to for advice. And now that Derek is a member of the board, things are weird with Hunt, and he feels like their relationship isn't what it once was. There really isn't anyone else. But maybe Lizzie could help.

"I'm worried about Meredith," he finally says.

Lizzie cocks her head and nods sympathetically. "She's doing fine," she says. "It's going touo take her awhile to recover—a horizontal and a vertical incision?—but she seems like she's coming along. And Bailey? He'll settle after the first few weeks."

"Weeks?" Derek can't help but burst out. It's not what he meant when he decided to start talking, but the idea that they could both be functioning in this fog of exhaustion for weeks is daunting.

Lizzie laughs and shakes her head. " _Hope_ that it's weeks, Derek. The lack of sleep isn't agreeing with you. Welcome to parenting a newborn. Besides being wonderful and magical and all of that, it kind of sucks."

Derek groans and leans back on the bench. "Zola slept through the night within the first two weeks. I feel like we're in for a bumpier ride this time."

"You can't really compare them, Derek," Lizzie says. "They're different kids. Plus, you adopted Zola when she was seven months old, right?" He nods, and she continues. "She had already gotten all of those newborn adjustments down before you met her. But you can tough it out. Meredith can too."

He sighs. Although the prospect of weeks without sleep wasn't exactly what he was hoping to contemplate, it really wasn't why he is concerned in the first place. "She can handle the baby," he says. "I'm worried she's going to lose it with everything going on with Richard."

Lizzie has probably absorbed a good bit about what's been going on with Richard simply through osmosis. Meredith has been on the phone quite a bit, and although she hasn't stopped to explain much to his mother and sister, he has helped them to grasp the major points of the crisis.

"He was an attending when you were in med school?" Lizzie asks.

It all seems like another life ago to Derek, so much so that he finds it hard to believe that this version of himself and that one are actually the same person.

"Yeah, and when I was an intern," he says. "He got me this job."

"I know," she replies pointedly.

His family didn't know who Richard Webber was seven years ago, but they learned quickly when Derek announced that he was moving to Seattle as soon as possible, that he had bought a piece of land, and that Richard Webber, one of his old mentors from med school, had offered him a job as head of neurosurgery at Seattle Grace. All of a sudden, Richard Webber had gone from being a nonentity to being a pariah in the Shepherd family. A lot of the heat on Richard was quickly removed once the family found out about Meredith and had somewhere else to direct their rage, but still—the Shepherd women tend to hold grudges. Derek sometimes forgets this about them, but it has become, once again, quite clear by the way his sister is looking at him now, half amused but half still pissed off about this long-ago slight.

"Liz, come on, you can't even give him a break now?" Derek chuckles. "It was seven years ago!"

"And now your kids are on the other side of the country!" she says.

"Oh, so it's all about the kids?" he shoots back. "Not about me?"

"Derek, I gave you my freakin' nerves," Lizzie scoffs. "That's enough about you."

Derek smiles and shakes his head, growing quiet for a moment. For awhile, he felt like he had a strong connection to Richard from their time in New York, but as his relationship with Meredith deepened, Derek's connection to Richard suddenly seemed trivial compared to hers.

"He can't die," he says. "Especially not after he made Meredith his proxy. She'll blame herself."

He has tried to fill his family in a little bit about the connection between Richard and Meredith—just the basics about Richard and Ellis, just enough to help them understand the importance of his survival.

"She shouldn't blame herself," Liz says. "It wouldn't be her fault if he dies."

"I know. But I could see her doing it," he says. "And besides, he's a good guy. Neither of them deserves what will happen if he dies."

He thinks that maybe he's hinted at this piece of it as he described their relationship to his family, though he has stopped himself from going into detail because it's not his story to tell. But because they're on their way to the hospital, and he doesn't know what he is going to find when he gets there, what he may have to call and tell Meredith later, he swells up with worry and tells Liz, "She doesn't really have a father. Richard is the closest thing. I don't always understand everything about their relationship. But that part, I can understand."

Liz frowns and looks at Derek with newfound sympathy. It seems like she understands a little more now too, about what he wants to protect her from.

"I think it was always the hardest on you," she says. "Losing Dad."

Derek shakes his head. It was a crushing loss for him, but he could be strong about it. Somehow, even though it was the same event, what happened to him was different, separate, from what happened to his sister. "Amy was just a kid," he says.

"So were you," Liz replies gently. She heaves a deep sigh, and continues on. "Well, we all were," she says. "But as bad as it was, I always remember thinking that at least I wasn't you. At least I didn't see it. At least I didn't have to figure out what to do with Amelia."

Derek nods. "And all I kept thinking then was at least that won't be the only thing I remember about him. Now, all I keep thinking is that at least I had other people. I had Mom, and you guys, and Mark. Meredith doesn't have anybody."

Liz shakes her head. "She has you," she says emphatically. "And she has her friends. That cardio girl is a little intense, but her heart seems to be in the right place."

Derek laughs, and shakes his head. The two of them sit in silence for a moment. Derek stares at his hands in his lap. Nothing Liz has said has told him how to get Richard to pull through, or how to help Meredith if he doesn't. But it feels better having said these things in the first place.

"Paul's mom died two years ago," Liz reminds him.

Derek nods. He remembers Liz's mother-in-law well, remembers seeing her at his nieces' and nephews' christenings and birthday parties. She always made it a point to say hello to him, to know all the Shepherd children and their spouses by name, and to remember whatever they talked about the last time their paths crossed so they could pick up on small talk like no time at all had passed.

His mother had called to tell him that she had liver cancer, and then called a few months later to tell him that she was gone. He hadn't been able to fly home for the funeral. They had just adopted Zola. But he had sent a card and made sure he spoke with Liz, Paul, and their kids. It is his then ten-year-old nephew's hiccupping breaths, his shaky, gulping conversation, that Derek remembers most.

"Just be there," Liz says finally. "That's all you have to do."

* * *

Bailey demands to be held constantly. By Meredith only. For the past two days. Every time someone else has tried to comfort him when he fusses, or even just give Meredith a break when he is calm, he will have none of it. He either wants to nurse, or snuggle in his mother's arms, and woe to anyone who tries to separate the two of them. And so Meredith has spent almost every second of the past two days propped up in bed with the baby nestled against her chest.

Zola is furious about the whole thing. On the first day, she understood, but now, on the afternoon of the second day, she has had enough. Derek and Lizzie are both at the hospital, and so Zola is stuck at home with a fussy baby. Meredith can hear her talking to Carolyn in the next room after Carolyn swoops in with just a second to spare before Zola's increasingly loud protests woke up her brother.

"No," Zola says indignantly. "He has to share."

"He doesn't know how to share yet, sweetheart," Carolyn says gently. "Babies are too little to share."

"No," she says. " _My_ Mommy."

"Mommy is here for both of you," Carolyn says. "It's ok. Can you be a big girl and share her with Bailey?"

"No."

"Carolyn," Meredith calls, as loudly as she dares to with Bailey asleep in her arms. "Carolyn, can you send her in here?"

Zola marches in and stands at the foot of the bed with her arms folded across her chest and a grimace on her face. Carolyn stands in the doorframe, but doesn't come into the bedroom any further than that.

"What's the matter, Lovebug?" Meredith asks.

"Bailey's not nice," she says.

"Why don't you think he's nice?" she asks. She watches Zola eye the baby, who is curled up on his tummy on Meredith's chest, with such disdain.

"Sharing," she says pointedly.

"Bailey's not sharing me?" Meredith asks.

Zola nods.

"You know what I think?" Meredith says. "I think that Bailey is just getting used to his new home and so he wants me to help him feel safe. When you were a baby and you first came home, you didn't want to be away from me either."

Meredith doesn't tell Zola that her separation anxiety came at ten months old, when she came home the second time after a lengthy, painful separation from her parents. The day Janet brought Zola back to them, she had seemed fine, but that night, when Meredith held her in the dark and rocked her, Zola had shaken herself out of what was almost sleep, and screamed when Meredith tried to put her down. It was then that they both started crying.

"I'm not leaving," Meredith had whispered over and over, day after day, until Zola believed it.

Bailey may be the one who needs to hear her heartbeat now. But though Meredith may be exhausted and trying to wean herself off painkillers, she sees something similar in Zola now that she also saw when Zola was a baby, some sense that things could shift at any moment.

"Do you want to come in bed with me?" Meredith asks.

Zola nods but says, "No Bailey."

"Bailey has to stay," Meredith says, "But I have plenty of room for you too."

Zola scowls, but crawls into bed. Meredith winces as Zola situates herself, shaking the mattress and jostling both the baby and her tender incisions. Zola rests her head on Meredith's hip and curls her fingers around a few of Meredith's fingers on her free hand.

Meredith wonders what will happen when Bailey wakes up and wants to nurse. She will need that hand back then, but for now, with one hand supporting Bailey and the other clasped firmly in Zola's, everything is peaceful.

"Are you ok?" Carolyn asks softly from the edge of the room.

"I think so," Meredith says. "Is there any way you could get me some water though?"

"Of course."

Carolyn comes back a few minutes later with some water, a plate of crackers, and an apple. "For later," she explains. "When you have a free hand."

Meredith laughs. "I don't know if I'm ever going to have a free hand again."

"You will," Carolyn assures her. "This too shall pass."

"I don't know how you did this with five of them," Meredith says.

"On a wing and a prayer," Carolyn says. "And with a husband who helped. You're going to be fine. You're doing great."

"We are a good team," Meredith says. "Right, Zo?"

Zola slings her free arm over Meredith's leg and, burrowing her face into Meredith's side, squeezes Meredith's fingers with her other hand.

Carolyn smiles. "Try to get some rest. I'll just be downstairs if you need me."

Before she can leave, though, Meredith's phone rings, vibrating itself nearly off the nightstand. She is scared to shift Bailey at all, not when he's so settled, and Zola won't let her go to answer it either.

"Wait," Meredith says to Carolyn. "Can you answer that?"

"It's Derek," Carolyn announces before answering. "Hi, sweetheart."

Derek must be a little surprised to get his mother instead of his wife because Carolyn follows up almost immediately with, "She kind of has her hands full. Everything's fine though. Do you need to talk to her?"

Carolyn nods, and then helps Meredith situate the phone in the crook of her neck, propped against her chin and her shoulder so she doesn't have to let go of either child.

"Thanks," Meredith mouths before turning to the call. "Derek?"

"Hi," he says, "Everything ok?"

"Yeah," she replies. "I have both kids in bed with me, and neither wants to let me go, so your mom has to be my hands for the moment. Is everything ok there?"

"Storm victims are definitely slowing down. Most emergencies seem to be from people getting hurt trying to repair their properties. Ross is prepping a guy right now for Callie and me. He broke his back after falling off his roof trying to clear debris."

"And Lizzie's finding things to do?"

"Oh yeah, she's down in the ER," he says. "I want to ask you about Richard though."

"Is he ok?" Meredith asks hurriedly.

"Avery wants to do skin grafts to repair some of the more severe burns, but he has an infection."

"Start him on IV antibiotics," she says. "Tell Bailey."

"We did. He's stable, but that's what I want to ask you. Do you think we should do the skin grafts now, or wait to try to get the infection under control? The damaged skin is destabilizing him, but…."

"But the infection makes the grafting procedure more risky," she finishes.

"Exactly. Bailey is just waiting for you to make the decision."

Meredith sighs. "Keep him on antibiotics for 24 hours, and then do the grafts. It's not perfect, but it'll have to do."

"I'll tell her," he says. "Ok, I have to go. Tell the kids hi for me. I'll see you tonight."

Meredith motions for Carolyn to take the phone for her, so Carolyn hangs it up and lays it back on the nightstand.

"Daddy says hi," Meredith says, squeezing Zola's hand.

"How's Richard?" Carolyn asks.

"Fighting an infection," Meredith says. "It's like one thing after another. I hate making all of these decisions for him."

It's Carolyn's turn to sigh now. "I know."

Meredith cocks her head. She forgets sometimes, because Derek hardly ever talks about any of it, about his father or about Amelia, that Carolyn must be able to imagine what this is like.

"I never had to with Chris," she says finally. "There wasn't time. I used to be angry about it because I never got to say goodbye, but now I'm grateful. I don't know if I would have been able to find the strength to let him go. But with Amy," she trails off.

Meredith shakes her head. She doesn't want to imagine it, what it must take to make these kinds of decisions not for Richard, but for the children in her arms now.

Bailey starts to squirm and then fuss. Meredith untangles her fingers from Zola's, shifts Bailey in her arms and pats his back, trying to settle him, but he just gets more upset.

"No," Zola whines. "No, Mommy."

"He's just hungry, honey," Carolyn says. "Mommy needs to feed him."

"Zo, you can stay if you want," Meredith says, "Or you can go with Nana. But if you stay, you have to be nice to Bailey."

Zola sits up and looks at Meredith and the baby, and then at Carolyn.

"Nana," Zola says.

It's not what Meredith wants to hear. As Bailey's screams grow louder, Zola scrambles quickly into Carolyn's arms, away from her. There's no time to try to convince her to stay, that this will all be all right, because Bailey's face is screwed up and red and he wants her attention _now_.

Carolyn shifts Zola onto her hip. "After three days, Derek asked me when we were giving Amelia back. And he was seven, not two. You're doing great," she says. "And she'll come around."

* * *

Carolyn and Lizzie have only been gone for two days and already—just two weeks in to the whole parenting two kids thing—Derek feels, if possible, even more exhausted.

At first, he was worried about what hosting his mother and sister for a week would be like. He, of all people, knows that his family can be intense. Though he knew that there was no way they were going to be kept away this time, and they had promised to help, he had worried that their help would be more trouble than it was worth. Now that they're gone, he wonders how they're going to make it, just the two of them. He knows that his mother and Liz both had to get back to their own lives, and that he and Meredith need to do the same.

He and Meredith have decided to try a divide and conquer strategy, at least at night. With the combination of Bailey's fussiness and Zola's jealousy, it has made more sense to separate them and try to cater to their individual needs. So, while Meredith nurses Bailey, he tries to settle Zola.

Unfortunately, Zola is so out of sorts that she doesn't know what she wants. He lets her pull out paper and crayons, and start coloring on the floor, but she quickly loses interest in that and starts listlessly pushing the bin of crayons back and forth as she lies on her back on the carpet.

Realizing that he is fighting a losing battle, he leaves for a moment to check on Meredith and the baby. Bailey's room is completely dark, and he can barely see Meredith in rocking chair in the corner. He hears her making loud shushing noises as Bailey whimpers and she switches him to the other breast.

"How's he doing?" he asks quietly.

"I think ok," she says. She pats his back and shushes him again, trying to get him to finish nursing. "How's Zo?"

"Overtired, so she's in good company," he says. "She's a little cranky; I'm just trying to get her to quiet down and relax."

Meredith laughs. "Well, if you crack the code on how to do that, please share."

He observes Bailey nestled snugly against Meredith, content for the moment. "I'd switch kids with you but he has decided he only has eyes for mama right now."

"I think Zola resents him," Meredith says after a moment. He has noticed Zola's jealousy too—it's been impossible not to—but he doesn't know what to do about it anymore than she does. His mother and sister have both assured them again and again that it will pass, that Zola will come around. They kept telling Meredith and him to keep including her, to try to make her feel special too, but in a way that was easier when the two of them were here to help with the baby and to help give Zola the extra attention that she seems to want. Without them, it's been challenging to just get through the day.

"She's only two, Meredith," he says finally, because he doesn't have any other answers. "She'll be ok."

Meredith sighs, and runs her hand gently over the crown of Bailey's head. "Go back to her," she says. "She's going to think he stole you too."

Back in the living room, he finds Zola flopped half on the couch and half off. Her head rests on the seat cushion as she kneels against the couch and spreads her arms across the seat, moving them back and forth. Why she won't just lie down, he doesn't know.

"Zola, how about a book before bed?" he offers.

"No," she replies in monotone, not moving from her position on the couch/floor.

"Are you too tired for a book?"

"No," she says defensively. "Not tired."

He shakes his head and tries not to get frustrated. "Want to lie with Daddy on the couch and watch some TV?" he asks.

They try not to let her watch that much TV, so he hopes that she will view this offer as a special treat, one that will end this charade of not being tired and cause her to finally succumb to sleep.

"No," Zola whines. "I want to play."

She slides off the couch and lies on her back on the floor, kicking her legs in the air halfheartedly a few times before letting them come to rest on the heels of her feet. He has seen this before, and knows that if he tries to pick her up, to force her to go to bed, she is going to start screaming. Before Bailey, they might have just gone for it, let her scream for a few minutes while they held her and settled her down, but now he knows that Zola's screaming will likely set off a chain reaction with unknown consequences.

"It's too late for playing, Zo," he says gently. "It's bedtime."

"No, it's not," she cries, her voice going up an octave.

Derek sighs and rubs his forehead. For a moment, he does not understand how he can clip delicate aneurysms, remove complicated tumors, separate conjoined twins, and literally save people's lives every day, but he cannot get a two-year-old to go to bed. He has just enough energy left to appreciate the irony. How many times has he heard people measure the relative difficulty of tasks set to them by saying, "Well, it's not like it's brain surgery."

He hears Bailey's door slide open and suddenly, Meredith is beside him, with an extremely drowsy Bailey in her arms.

"I have an idea," she says. "Zola, want to go for a ride?"

He looks at her like she's gone crazy until he remembers: Zola used to fall asleep on car rides.

"Lizzie suggested it before she left, and then I remembered that we used to do it for her," Meredith says. "And it can't make it worse. You have to drive though; I can't. Zo, do you want to go for a ride?"

Zola whines and flops over onto her stomach. "I need my shoes," she moans.

"No, you don't," Meredith assures her as she grabs a few blankets off the couch. "Daddy will carry you to the car."

Derek takes this as his cue to scoop Zola off the floor and into his arms. She doesn't cry the way he expected her to just moments before. He slides the first pair of shoes he sees by the door onto his feet, and opens the front door with Meredith following closely behind with the baby. The cooler, fresh air of the summer evening feels refreshing after being cooped up in the house most of the day. With no close neighbors around, the house is the only thing lighting up the ground around them.

He opens one of the back doors of his car for Meredith, and while she places Bailey in his car seat, he goes around to the other side and puts Zola in hers. Meredith tucks one of the blankets around Bailey, sticks a pacifier in his mouth, and passes the other blanket to Derek. He spreads it across Zola's lap, and gives her one of the edges to hold onto.

When they close the back doors and get into the car themselves, Bailey wakes up and starts to fuss again.

"Oh no, Mommy," Zola whines desperately. "No."

"It's ok, Lovebug," Meredith says. He watches her grimace as she tries to turn around to comfort Zola. All she can manage to do is turn a little and put her hand on Zola's knee. "I think he's going to fall asleep soon. Start driving," she tells Derek.

They drive through their dark, sparsely inhabited wooded neighborhood at a slow, steady pace. It works so well that he can hardly believe it. Within seven or eight minutes, Bailey is sound asleep and the car is quiet.

"He's asleep," Derek can't help but marvel, as though Bailey asleep at night is something that has never occurred to him as a possibility before.

"Your sister's a genius," Meredith says in relief. "Keep driving."

"Where are we going?" Zola asks tiredly. Derek wonders if this all will backfire, if the same car ride that has lulled Bailey to sleep will make Zola even crankier.

"We're just exploring, Lovebug," Meredith says in a gentle, steady voice. "Just exploring."

"Exploring?" Zola asks.

"Yes," she replies in the same tone. "But we have to be quiet because we're on a quest."

"What's a quest?"

"We are just looking at things out the window to see what we find," Meredith says. "Oh, Zola, look at the stars. Are you looking?"

"Yeah."

He glances in the rearview at his daughter. She has finally rested her head against the side of her car seat and is looking out the window, looking up at the sky as she listens to Meredith's voice.

"Those stars are so beautiful," Meredith says, slowly and warmly and gently. "Do you see them in the sky? What do you see?"

Zola yawns. He doesn't want to celebrate too soon, but he worships Meredith in this moment. Could they be almost there?

"Lights," Zola says thickly.

"Good girl," Meredith murmurs. "Just look at the lights."

They take the back roads, avoiding heading towards Bainbridge Island's busier sections. Instead, they wind through areas with just a few houses, no traffic, and few lights. There is no destination in mind.

After another ten minutes, he glances in his rearview again to find both kids sound asleep. Zola clutches the blanket in both hands, bunching it up under her chin as her head rests against the side of the car seat closer to Bailey. Bailey sleeps contentedly with his head to one side, closer to Zola, sucking on his pacifier.

"Oh, thank God," he breathes as Meredith sighs in relief too. "You're amazing," he says.

"Who would have thought going from one to two kids would be this hard?" Meredith says.

He expected this feeling of being overwhelmed when they had Zola, simply because they didn't know what to do with a baby and everything was new to them. When Meredith was pregnant with Bailey, he didn't worry so much. He thought they had everything down pat, and that while it would be an adjustment, it would be one that they could easily make. He thought that the major kinks had been worked out when they had their first, and they wouldn't have to deal with major upheaval until, if or when, they had a third child and they would truly be outnumbered.

"I know," he says. "I thought we would be evenly matched. One on one."

Meredith snorts. "Yeah, we're not."

He holds the wheel with his left hand, and reaches over to grasp her hand in his right. Impossibly, he feels a little more energized now, especially with Meredith's hand clasped in his. But they have nearly a full tank of gas, and nowhere else to be, and he doesn't want to test their luck just yet, so he keeps driving.

On a dark back road, just about three miles from home, he runs over a small tree branch. The crack and slight bump must shift Bailey, because he starts to fuss again, though he never fully wakes. Zola moans a little, but doesn't seem to wake up either. Derek cringes, and just keeps driving, and a few minutes, both kids are quiet again.

"Derek," Meredith whispers. She glances in the rearview mirror and then turning around to really see for herself. "Derek, look."

He looks in the rearview too. Zola, semi-consciously, has reached over and laid her hand over one of Bailey's tightly clenched fists. She has fallen back to sleep this way, holding his hand as they continue to drive.

Derek smiles. "Let's go home."


	3. Chapter 3

_Kiss with a mouth full of shooting stars  
_ _All the lost and the broken parts_

* * *

After losing her heart-liver transplant and fighting with Derek and Cristina, Meredith feels off-balance and exhausted. It only takes a few minutes of her and Derek yelling at one another for them both to realize that neither has the energy to fight. Derek leaves her to go take a shower, but as tired as she is, Meredith doesn't go up to bed herself.

Instead, she rattles around in the kitchen for a few minutes alone. She unloads the dishwasher, and starts trying to sort through the pile of mail that has been building on the counter for weeks. She doesn't make much progress, though, before Bailey starts crying.

Upstairs, she lifts Bailey out of his crib and settles into the rocking chair in the corner of his room with him in her arms. As he starts to nurse, he lays his hand across her chest and looks up at her. His eye contact has gotten so much better over the past few weeks, and it is still exciting to her to know that when he looks at her, he is doing it because he knows her.

"Hi," she says quietly. "Hi, little guy."

She has been stressed all week; the idea of sending him to daycare, of letting someone else hold him and feed him and comfort him, has worn her out. What if he doesn't want her anymore? Or, what if he wants her so much and doesn't understand why she isn't there? She may be imagining it, but to her, Bailey has seemed more wound up at the end of the day since they returned to work. She wonders if he is missing them. In any case, it has taken longer to settle him down at night, and he seems to need this time with her more than he did even a week ago.

This moment with Bailey forces Meredith to slow down, to be quiet, and to relax. She smoothes her hand over his head before pulling him close to her and encircling him with both arms. She looks down at him for a second, but then stares off into space as Cristina's words from earlier that day come back to her: how quickly Cristina told her that she wasn't as good of a surgeon as she was, how Cristina told her that she had let up.

It's not the notion that Cristina is a better surgeon than she is that rankles. If she is being honest, she knows that Cristina has pushed herself so hard, has dedicated herself so completely to her profession, that it is the objective truth that she is more skillful.

It's not even Cristina's suggestion that Meredith has let up that bothers her. She loves these babies. She cannot imagine her life without them. They are the best thing that she has ever done.

It's just—Cristina said it earlier—there's her own mother to think about. Since becoming a mother herself, she has tried so hard to make different choices, to say and to show her love for her children as much as she possibly can so that they will feel it and know it. In that way, she does not want to be her mother, but in other ways, she very much does.

It's difficult not to work in the same professional circles as her mother once did and not take to heart the borderline-reverence that so many people, even in her own generation, have for Ellis Grey, even though she has been dead for six years, and out of the field even longer than that. It's harder still to ignore the implied comparisons and expectations, from others and from herself. She wants to be a talented, gifted, extraordinary surgeon too. And she does not measure up.

The way she sees it, there are two possibilities here. The first is that her mother might have really loved her, and might have tried to be a good mom, at least at first. In a way, it has always been almost easier for Meredith to think that Ellis didn't love her, at least not the same way that she loves Zola and Bailey. If Ellis didn't love her like this, then it explains everything about her childhood in a way that makes sense. But if Ellis did love her, if she tried, then Meredith is terrified for what her life might become, and what it will be like if she always falls short.

She has had five days back at work to show her that thinking differently and trying hard might not be enough. Five days have been enough to show her that it doesn't matter how much she loves Zola and Bailey, that her job might cause them not to feel that love sometimes.

If Ellis really tried, the way Meredith is trying now, then Meredith doesn't see a way to succeed. Maybe it just cannot be done.

The second, and more likely possibility, is that Ellis Grey probably realized very quickly that it might be impossible to perform at an elite level in more than one thing. After all, what was the expression? You can have anything in life, if you're willing to sacrifice everything else for it. There is no expression for having two things.

Her mother, almost always practical to a fault, might have come to understand that she had to make a choice: her child or her career. And she went with what she was already good at. She would go on to win the Harper Avery twice, to publish article after article, to be one of the world's most sought-after surgeons while Meredith was raised mostly by nannies.

Cristina was right; Meredith does not want to be her mother. And if it comes down to making a choice, she would choose Zola and Bailey over the hospital. And she wouldn't do it just because she often deliberately chooses to do the opposite thing her mother would have done just to prove a point. She would do it because _of course_ she would, because there is no other way.

She would give it all up if she had to, but she senses acutely that she is her mother's daughter when the thought of a life without surgery almost makes her panic. She would do it. If she had to. If that's what it took. But she doesn't want to have to, and that makes her feel selfish. Just as she would stand in front of an oncoming train for Zola and Bailey, it doesn't mean that she is actively looking for the tracks.

Either way, what makes her heart pound is the idea that no matter what, she might turn into her mother anyway, that she won't be able to help it. She lets a breath go and looks down at the baby in her arms.

"You're happy, right?" she asks Bailey as she hears the shower turn off down the hall.

Bailey stares up at her with such trust in his eyes that it makes her want to cry.

* * *

Derek crawls into bed after his shower and waits for Meredith. Over the baby monitor, he can hear her get up and tiptoe across Bailey's floor to put him in his crib. Although he has heard her in his room so many times since he was born, this somehow feels like an intrusion.

"Goodnight, little guy," he hears her say. "See you in a little bit."

She starts undressing as soon as she returns to their bedroom, unbuttoning her shirt and slipping a tank top on instead, and trading her jeans for yoga pants.

"Is he ok?" he asks.

"Yeah, he's asleep again," she replies.

She turns to use the bathroom without another word, but before she can go in, he stops her.

"I'm sorry you missed your surgery."

There are pieces of himself that have surfaced today that he recognizes from a previous life, pieces of himself that he is ashamed of. He was selfish and short-sighted today, if not intentionally inconsiderate than just unthinking.

Even when he finally got Meredith's voicemail that Zola needed stitches, he felt badly but reasoned with himself that it was just two stitches and Meredith had been there. He never connected Meredith being with Zola to her not being in the OR herself. Now that it's all over, though, he sees that today, he reminded himself of the husband he used to be when he was married to Addison. He has disappointed himself. He wants to be better than what he was today.

Meredith looks back at him. Fiery during their fight, she simply looks exhausted now. "I need you to answer your phone when I call you," is all she says.

"I'm sorry," he says again. "I didn't know what to do. I had all these guys in from all over for the AVM."

"I don't care, Derek," she says, her voice worn out. "I knew you had an AVM. I called you in the middle of it because it was important."

"Meredith."

"I need you," she says, cutting him off. "I can't do this by myself."

He is taken aback. Is that really how she sees this? He doesn't know what to say. Meredith stares at him expectedly, but before he figures out how to respond, they both hear Zola over her monitor.

"Mom," Zola croaks in a sleepy voice, before her voice breaks and she starts crying. "Mama."

Meredith sighs, and leaves him there to comfort Zola. A moment later, he hears her open Zola's door and say in a quiet voice, "What's the matter, Lovebug?"

"Head hurts," Zola whimpers.

"Ok, you're ok," Meredith says. "Want Mommy to lie down with you for a little while?"

Zola must nod, because he hears the mattress of Zola's bed creak as Meredith climbs in.

"Can I look at your head for a minute?" Meredith asks. After a pause, she says, "You're my brave girl. Do you know that? You're going to feel a lot better in the morning, and in a few days, you won't have these stitches anymore."

"I don't want stitches," Zola cries.

"I know; I don't want you to have stitches either."

Derek doesn't want to let Zola cry for long. He jumps up and grabs the children's Tylenol out of their medicine cabinet, and lets himself into Zola's room.

Their daughter is curled up with Meredith in bed, with her head on Meredith's chest and with one arm slung across Meredith's stomach. Meredith has one arm wrapped around Zola, but covers her face with her free hand as she lies propped up in Zola's bed.

"I got the Tylenol," he says.

Meredith nods, and removes her hand from covering her eyes. "Zola, we have some medicine to help you feel better, ok?"

"No," Zola howls. "No medicine, Mommy."

"It'll make your head stop hurting," she says. "Derek, measure out the dose."

He pours the red liquid into the small cup, and holds it out to Zola. "See?" he asks. "Just one sip, and you'll feel better. Mommy told me how brave you were today. Can you be brave again?"

Zola nods and rubs her face against Meredith's shirt, smearing snot across her front. She swallows the medicine still with her head against Meredith's chest.

"Good girl," Derek praises. "How about Daddy holds you for a little while until you feel better?"

Meredith winces when Zola reaches out for him. As he scoops Zola into his arms, he turns to Meredith and says, "Why don't you go relax? I can take it from here."

She looks torn for a moment as to whether or not she should go. In the end, she must decide that it's ok though, because she kisses Zola and pulls the door closed behind her.

He settles into Zola's rocking chair with her in his arms. She's getting too old to really use this chair, but on a night like tonight, he's glad they bought another one for Bailey rather than just giving him this one.

"I'm sorry you hurt your head, Zo," he says as he starts to rock back and forth, patting her back gently as he does.

"Slide is bad," Zola says.

"No," he replies. "The slide isn't bad; it was just an accident. Accidents happen sometimes."

"Head hurts."

"I know, but you'll feel better soon," he says.

Zola hiccups as her crying slows down, and he spends a moment or two just shushing her and rocking back and forth with his hand lightly on her back.

As he holds Zola in the dark, he starts to realize that this is different for Meredith, that she has seen all of this differently than he has. She has not perceived this as one of those days that happens to be worse than the rest. For her, maybe this doesn't feel like an outlier, but like a norm, like the start of a show she has seen before.

Growing up in a family of five children, even with the most attentive parents, Derek didn't take it personally that his parents had to work. Especially after his father died, it was just a necessity, a reflection of his parents' selflessness if anything, not their self _ish_ ness. Maybe for Meredith, it isn't like that. Because even when he was twenty-eight and got into a minor motorcycle accident—one that left a scar in the same place that Zola will likely have one now—and even though he was a doctor himself at that point and perfectly capable of taking care of himself, his mother had rushed to the hospital to be by his side. And he has a feeling Meredith doesn't know what that is like.

Just when he thinks Zola is asleep again, something startles her out of it enough to make her whimper and moan again.

"Shh," he murmurs. "You'll feel better soon."

It takes a few more minutes for her to really fall completely and totally asleep. He lays her back down in her bed, and pulls her door closed behind him.

Back in their bedroom, although the lights are off, Meredith isn't yet asleep. When he gets into bed next to her, she doesn't turn to face him like she normally does if she's still awake, but just stares off into space without a word.

"She's asleep. She's ok," he says. He sees her nod, but she doesn't respond any more than that. He lets a moment's silence go by before he says, "I'm sorry. You're not by yourself. I'm sorry."

She nods, but brings a hand up to her face again and doesn't turn around.

"It's just a bad day," he says. In those few words, he tries to communicate everything else he knows she needs to hear: that it won't always be like this, that it will get better, that it's not her fault, that her children love her, that she is good, that she is not Ellis. "It's just one bad day," he repeats. "That's all. Just one bad one."

She sighs, and when he moves closer to her and wraps his arms around her, she lets him.

* * *

The next morning, Meredith still feels anxious about the events of the previous day. But there are children demanding breakfast, so there isn't much time to fix anything, and at least it's Saturday. She won't have to deal with _all_ of this again until Monday.

In their kitchen, Derek pours Zola more cereal and Meredith nurses Bailey while eating from her own bowl. She still feels badly about Zola missing her princess tea party yesterday, though with Zola's injury she doesn't seem too angry about it. Thankfully, she seems to be feeling much better this morning.

"Hey, Zo," Meredith says, "Do you want to pick out a Halloween costume today?"

Zola's eyes light up. With a mouthful of cereal, she nods.

This is the first year that Zola really understands Halloween, or at least the first year that she is excited about dressing up and getting free candy. She has been talking through costume ideas for a few weeks, but they've put off actually buying one, partially because Meredith doesn't want her to change her mind a million times before Halloween but mostly because they just haven't had time to go out. But Meredith has decided that today is the day. She can at least do this.

She and Derek pack up the car later that morning to take a trip to Target. They need to run other errands too, and neither of them has the time or the energy to go to multiple stores anymore.

Once they get there, because all the Halloween stuff is right at the front of the store, Zola's eyes widen in excitement. Meredith wonders if she will regret telling Zola she can pick any costume she wants when she looks at the selection, a pretty large one for not even being a Halloween store. Zola looks longingly at the displays, pulling on Meredith's hand while she and Derek load Bailey, car seat and all, into an empty shopping cart.

"Ok, so diapers, cleaning stuff—" Derek says, trying to run through a mental list.

"Mommy, come _on_ ," Zola whines.

"Zola, hold on a second," Meredith says as she rummages in the diaper bag for a pacifier for Bailey. The task should be a simple one but doing it one-handed while her other hand grips Zola, who is trying hard to get away, makes it a little more challenging.

"Do you want to just go separately?" Derek asks Meredith. "I'll take the baby and get the diapers and everything else. Do you think that would be enough time to pick a costume?"

"I think so," she says. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah," he replies. "You have fun with her. We need some father-son bonding time anyway, right, B? Zola, why don't you go look at costumes with Mommy? I'll stay with Bailey and get his diapers."

"I don't need diapers. I'm a big girl."

Derek laughs. "I know you are. Go have fun with Mommy."

Meredith smiles. "Come on, Zo. Derek, don't forget to get some C-A-N-D-Y."

"I don't think we're going to have many trick-or-treaters," he says, "The house is in the middle of nowhere."

"Not for us. She needs it for daycare. They're having a little P-A-R-T-Y. Remember, they sent an email?"

"Mommy!" Zola whines. "Please let's go!"

"Zola, one more second," Meredith says before turning back to Derek, and raising an eyebrow.

"The email," he says, "Right! Ok, so C-A-N-D-Y."

"Yes, nothing with nuts in it. Two kids in her class have peanut allergies. Ok!" she says with much more enthusiasm, looking down at a now very impatient Zola. "Costumes!"

Meredith and Zola part ways with Derek and Bailey, and Meredith leads Zola by the hand down the costume aisle.

"Did you think about what you want to be?" Meredith asks.

Zola nods excitedly, but doesn't say a word.

"Ok, what are you thinking about?"

"Costumes," Zola says with a delighted smile.

Meredith laughs. Zola is almost three years old, but knowing her, she has probably run through three hundred possible ideas in her head.

"Ok, well let's look around," Meredith says.

Meredith starts holding up costume after costume—everything from the cute to the funny to the surprisingly slutty, even for a toddler—and Zola likes them all. She does not want to explain to Zola that she is only getting one costume. She is pretty sure that is a tantrum waiting to happen.

Finally, she starts holding up just two costumes at a time and asking Zola which one she likes better. It takes forever, but finally, after a long process of elimination, the last costume left standing is a brightly colored butterfly outfit. Zola seems satisfied.

"Is this the one you like the best?" Meredith asks.

Zola nods, but then quickly asks, "Do you like it?"

"I do," Meredith says. "I love it."

"I can wear it right now?" Zola asks.

Meredith hesitates. The whole thing comes in two packages, one for the outfit itself and one for the wings and antenna. She's not going to change Zola in the middle of the store, but she figures it won't be a huge problem if she opens the wings and antenna. They're planning to buy it anyway, and with no princess tea party, she feels like she should try to make it up to Zola in some other way.

"How about just the wings for now?" Meredith says. "That way we can keep some of it special just for Halloween?"

"Wings are the best part," Zola replies excitedly.

Meredith sets her bag and the rest of the costume on the floor while she opens the package and helps Zola slip on her wings. At the beginning of the costume search, Meredith felt badly about buying a costume at all. Some of the crafty moms in Zola's class were making their kids elaborate costumes, and they could not help but share in a sort of passive-aggressive braggy way how much work it was going to be but how positively adorable their children were going to look.

Now, though, with Zola staring up at her with a huge grin on her face, it doesn't seem to matter as much that Zola's costume isn't handmade. Meredith may be biased, but she is sure that Zola is going to be the cutest kid at the Halloween party and that those overachieving moms have nothing on her.

"You," Meredith says, kneeling down so she can straighten Zola's wings. "Look great. Are you excited for Halloween?"

"Yes," Zola nods.

"Good." Meredith stands up and adds, "Daddy and I are excited too. Hey, should we pick out a costume for Bailey while we're here?"

Zola wrinkles her nose, and Meredith senses a protest coming on—things are better between Zola and Bailey but still not perfect—but she wants her son to have a Halloween too. As long as Bailey is full, warm, and dry, he is a happy boy, so Meredith feels absolutely no qualms about what she says next: "You can pick out his costume too."

This seems to be a good trade-off for Zola, who doesn't feel like dealing with Bailey, but also could have shopped for Halloween costumes for the rest of the morning. Eventually, she picks out a bear costume for him, a fuzzy sleeper complete with ears and paws. She hasn't even dressed him in it yet but she smiles in anticipation of how adorable he will be.

"Zola, you did a great job," Meredith says. "Should we go find Daddy and Bailey?"

She calls Derek, who tells her that he and Bailey are in the laundry detergent aisle, and they will wait there for them. Meredith is pretty sure she knows where the detergent is until they walk around for five minutes and don't find it. Every time she's been in here lately, it's been in a total fog of exhaustion. It's a miracle she found anything at all, and so it makes sense that she has not retained much information about where various products are located.

Finally, she hears Derek call out, "Meredith!" and she looks ahead to see him, with Bailey in his arms, just a few aisles up. Zola breaks out into a run, and leaves her behind as she rushes up to Derek.

The joy on Zola's face as she shows off her butterfly wings, and the delight on Derek's face as he takes her in, are almost palpable.

"There's my big girl!" Derek says. "Are you a butterfly?"

"Yes!" Zola cries.

Meredith catches up to Zola, drops the costumes in the cart, and scoops Bailey out of Derek's arms. Zola spins around to show off her wings, and then reaches up to Bailey, closing her hand around his foot.

"Bailey, you are my baby bear," she exclaims, nearly shouting.

In this moment, it is hard for Meredith to remember what she is mad about, or what she is afraid of. This little moment in the laundry detergent aisle feels like a longed-for victory.


	4. Chapter 4

_Unafraid, you can name your scars_   
_With the touch of a new heart_

* * *

A few days after they agree that Derek will take a step back to allow Meredith more time to focus on work, Derek feels like it's all going pretty well. His brain-mapping project is moving forward, Zola is thrilled to spend more time with him, and he still gets to scrub in on a decent amount of surgeries anyway. Meredith is still incredibly stressed out sometimes, but Derek blames her friends for that. He feels frustrated so for her, and even a little sad, because he knows how much she loves Cristina and because it seems like no matter how hard she tries to find balance, something always gets in the way. Still, he couldn't be more proud of her.

One Friday morning, while Bailey rocks gently in his swing in the living room, Derek spreads his paperwork out on the coffee table and works from the couch on his laptop. Zola is old enough that she can play by herself in her room, at least for a little while before she gets bored. This leaves Meredith free to finish getting ready for work, and she sorts through the mail while she waits for her breakfast to finish toasting.

"Derek?" she says.

"Hmm?"

"Your mom sent you something."

"What is it?" he asks.

When his mother was here a few months ago, after Bailey was born, he remembers asking her for his old baseball cards so he can give them to Bailey when he's older, and if that's what they are, brain-mapping can wait. He has been anxious to see those cards again for awhile.

"I don't know," Meredith replies. Standing behind him and looking over his shoulder, she passes him a much smaller envelope than what he was expecting. "Here, you open it."

He slides a finger under the seal of the envelope and pulls out a single photograph with a piece of notebook paper folded around it. He disregards the loose-leaf at first, and grips the photo by its worn edge.

In it, he sees his father, sitting on the sofa in what he recognizes as his childhood living room. Chris Shepherd's jet-black hair is cropped closely to his head and his smiling face looks so youthful, more so than Derek ever remembers seeing it in life. In the photo, his father holds a baby upright on his knee—Derek recognizes the baby as himself immediately—and inclines his head towards the child in his arms, so close that the stubble on his face is almost touching him. Derek himself could be no more than six months old in this picture, and it looks like the camera caught him in the middle of a belly laugh. When Derek looks closer, he can see his father's fingertips digging into his sides, tickling him. Derek checks the back of the picture for a date, but there isn't one, only his mother's perfect script, written in pencil and faded with time, noting "Christopher and Derek."

"Is that you?" Meredith asks softly. Derek nods. Neither of them has many childhood photos around. As she leans over the back of the couch to get a closer look at the picture in his hand, he thinks that she might be searching the baby's face for hints of her son.

But then she says, "You look like your dad."

Neither of them says anything for a moment while Derek continues to stare at the picture. He does look a little like his dad, he supposes—it's that Shepherd hair—but he studies the photo not for hints of himself, but to drink in the details of the father he rarely looks at. His childhood home is full of family photos—they make his mother feel better—but he prefers to just remember his dad without seeing his face every day. It's been awhile since he's seen him.

"She sent a note with it," Meredith finally says, motioning to the discarded piece of paper on the couch next to him. He sets the photo down on his lap and unfolds the paper, wondering how his mother's handwriting hasn't changed in over forty years.

_Derek, the girls are helping me organize some old pictures, and we found this. I thought you might like to have it. You remind me more of your father every day. I couldn't be more proud. See you, Meredith, and the kids for Christmas. Love, Mom_

"Are you ok?" Meredith asks. She squeezes his shoulder, but he doesn't turn around. Getting this picture isn't a bad thing, but it has definitely surprised him.

"Yeah," he says quickly.

Meredith doesn't say anything, and doesn't remove her hand from his shoulder. He turns around and smiles for her. "I'm good," he says.

For a moment, she looks like she wants to say something, but she must decide against it.

"Ok," she finally says. "I need to get to the hospital. I nursed him an hour ago, so he should be good for a little while. I'll be home for his 7:00 feeding. Zola?" she calls, as she rounds the couch to get to Bailey. "I'm leaving."

"Bye, Mom!" Zola shouts back from her room.

Meredith's head jerks up from Bailey's swing and she turns back to Derek. "Mom?" Meredith mouths sadly.

Derek laughs. "She's still little," he assures her.

Meredith sighs. "Bye, B," she says, leaning down and kissing Bailey several times before she finally pulls herself away. She kisses Derek too, with a whispered goodbye, then grabs her toast, wraps it in a paper towel, and leaves.

Derek puts the photo down on the table but for awhile, he can't focus on his open laptop and the half a dozen medical journals he has open and dog-eared on the table. It takes a few minutes before he gives up the pretense of doing work, and picks up the photo again.

Meredith was right before. Although Chris Shepherd is younger by about ten years in this photo than Derek is now, he sees how easily he could stand in his father's shoes. They have the same build, the same hair, the same crinkle around the eyes.

He never talks about his father. Well, he hardly ever does. It's at least much less often than his mother and sisters do. Meredith doesn't push him on it, and for that, he loves her. But he thinks of his father more often now than he used to, and this picture is a reminder that Chris Shepherd really, truly was alive once. There was a time when he wasn't a myth or a specter, a time when he sat on a sofa with his infant son and lived the same ordinary moments that Derek himself is living now.

He lets himself look for a few moments more before he shakes himself out of it. He closes his laptop and stands up with it and the photo in his hands. He glances over at Bailey, still swinging drowsily and contentedly in the corner of the room, and then calls to Zola.

"Zola, come on out here," he says. "It's time for breakfast."

He sets the laptop and photo on the kitchen counter, and smiles as his daughter comes down the hall with three stuffed animals in her arms. Her pajama leggings are bunched up a little high on her shins, and in her attempt to hold on to all three animals at the same time, her shirt has ridden up to expose a little of her belly.

"Do we have guests for breakfast?" he asks.

She nods, and passes a stuffed lion, giraffe, and dog to him so he can seat them on the empty chairs next to her. Then she reaches up for him to lift her into her chair. Once she is strapped in, he asks, "What do you want to eat?"

"Cookies," she says.

"I don't think so," he replies.

Zola wrinkles her nose. "Mommy said yes."

He has meant to talk to Meredith about this, whether she too has noticed that Zola already tries to pit them against one another, to confuse them on what the other one has said she can or cannot do. Sometimes, she gets away with it, like if she asks for ten extra minutes before bedtime or a trip to the library—requests that Meredith would usually indulge—but he is certain that Meredith did not say she could have cookies for breakfast.

"No, she didn't," he replies firmly. "Only after dinner. How about eggs?"

Zola scowls, but then nods.

He cracks two eggs into a bowl and whisks them before pouring them into a skillet. He turns around for a second to confirm who he thinks he sees at the counter, and then, turning back to the eggs to continue scrambling them, he asks, "What do you, Joseph, Nugget, and Fuzzy have planned for today?"

He is kind of proud of himself for remembering the names of these particular stuffed animals. Zola would be quick to correct him if he was wrong, and she says nothing, so he must have gotten them all right. But Zola doesn't respond.

Instead, she leans forward in her seat and reaches for the photo, pinching her fingers over it until it gets close enough to her that she can grab it.

"That's Bailey?" she asks.

"No, that's me, when I was a baby."

Zola looks confused for a second. How could her father have ever been a baby? Then she points to Chris and asks, "Who's that?"

"That's my dad," Derek replies.

He and Meredith haven't really talked to Zola very much about Ellis and Chris, or even Lexie and Mark. It's not that they don't want to, but they agreed that Zola is only two years old, and she might not understand, especially when some of the people in question are people she has never met before. They have explained to her, as best they could, what it means to die—simply because they had to, considering their line of work—but they haven't ever really had a conversation about their own friends and family who have died.

Which is probably why Zola says, in a confused voice, "You don't have a daddy."

"I used to," he says.

"How come not anymore?"

"He died, Zo," Derek says. "A long time ago."

"Oh," she replies. "Why?"

This is so much earlier than he ever planned to have this conversation. For a second, he is irrationally annoyed with his mother for sending the picture at all, and then with himself for leaving it in such easy reach. At the very least, he knows he will never, ever tell Zola about the sheer terror he felt when he saw, through the crack in a back door left slightly ajar, a gun pointed at his father's chest. He'll never tell her about clapping a hand over Amy's mouth, and holding her so tightly she couldn't move, or about the shock that came with realizing that all of his father's blood was now on the floor of his shop. He'll have to tell her someday that his father was murdered. But he'll never, ever tell her these other things, not now, when she is only two years old, or even later, when she is grown up. Not ever.

So now, all he says is, "His heart just got really hurt one day and he died."

"Oh," Zola says, still staring intently at the photo. "That's sad."

After a beat, he finally says something, impressed with her response. "Yeah, it is. I miss him a lot."

Zola sighs and doesn't say anything for a moment or two. It seems like the conversation just washes over her and then it's gone. Finally, she looks up and just asks, "Joseph can have cereal? He doesn't like eggs."

* * *

The next day brings a morning that allows all four of them to be home together. Derek showers and Meredith cleans up the remains of breakfast, while Zola colors and Bailey sits in his bouncy seat on the kitchen counter.

"Bailey, this is red," Zola says, placing a red crayon in Bailey's hand.

"Zola," Meredith says, turning around from the kitchen sink. "We can't give him crayons."

"Why not?"

Meredith hates to correct her, because she wants to encourage any and all positive interaction with Bailey, but she really can't let her five-month-old suck or gnaw on a crayon.

"Well, he might try to eat it," Meredith says as she takes the crayon out of Bailey's hand and gives it back to Zola.

"It's not food," Zola says matter-of-factly.

"I know, but Bailey doesn't know that. Why don't you use it to color instead?"

Zola goes back to her project, and while she works, Meredith takes a good look at her head. She then announces, "Hey, Zozo, you know what? We can take your stitches out today."

Zola looks up from her coloring from her seat at the kitchen counter. After a day or two, she has mostly forgotten that the stitches are even there, so this announcement must come as a bit of a surprise. "Alex can do it?" she asks.

"No," Meredith replies. "I'm going to do it. I'm a doctor too, remember?"

Zola smiles, until she sees Meredith rummage in the kitchen medicine cabinet for a pair of surgical scissors, and her eyes grow wide. Meredith also takes out a bottle of rubbing alcohol, washes her hands, and sterilizes the scissors with a clean paper towel and a healthy amount of the disinfectant.

"No, Mommy," Zola says, staring at her with a crayon in each fist.

"All I need to do is cut two little strings, and we'll be done. I'll be super gentle," Meredith assures her.

"Like when you cut my nails?" Zola asks.

"Exactly like that," Meredith says. "And you can have a piece of your Halloween candy when we're all done."

This seems to make the whole thing much easier to bear for Zola. For a two-year-old, she had remarkable stamina on Halloween, and even with Meredith and Derek secretly eating some of her candy, she still has a ton of it left.

When Zola sees the scissors up close though, she seems to reconsider. "No," Zola whines. "Use my pink scissors."

"I can't, Zo," Meredith says, thinking of Zola's pair of pink safety scissors with rounded edges and blades so dull they can barely cut a piece of paper. "I have to use my surgery scissors. It's only on the string, not on your skin. It won't really hurt."

Zola looks up at the scissors with doubt and fear plainly etched across her face. Meredith, with the scissors in hand, doesn't dare move them closer to her face in case she flinches, in which case she really will get hurt.

"Can you show me your tough girl face?" Meredith asks, but Zola is fixated on the scissors. "Don't look at the scissors," she urges her. "Show me and Bailey your tough girl face."

Zola seems to gather herself. She screws up her face into a grimace, and flexes both arms. It's something Derek taught her and it never fails to make Meredith smile.

"There it is!" Meredith exclaims. "Bailey, look how brave Zola is!"

And while she is talking, she quickly snips Zola's two stitches, and pulls out the remaining thread.

"All done," she says. "You were such a brave girl!"

"Done?" Zola asks incredulously.

"Yep, no more stitches."

"I can see?" Zola asks, feeling the smooth ridge of slightly raised skin on her forehead with her fingertips. Meredith rummages in her purse for a compact, and shows Zola her reflection in the mirror.

"What's that?" Zola asks.

"That's just a little scar," Meredith explains. "Sometimes that happens when your skin heals."

Zola wrinkles her nose. "I don't like it."

"It's ok," Meredith says. "When you get bigger, you probably won't be able to even see it," Meredith assures her.

"No," Zola whines.

"It's ok to have a scar, Lovebug," Meredith says gently. "Lots of people have them."

Zola scowls, and crosses her arms over her chest. "I don't like it."

Meredith doesn't really know what to tell her. Besides putting Mederma on it each day, there's really not a whole lot either of them can do about Zola's scar, except wait for it to fade.

"Can I show you something?" she finally asks. She lifts up her shirt so Zola can see her stomach. "Look, I have scars too."

Zola looks a little shocked when she sees the vertical scar right down the middle from her c-section and splenectomy, the hook-shaped scar from her liver surgery, and a smaller centipede of a scar below her belly-button and a little to the right from her appy. Zola can't even see the transverse incision across her lower abdomen, the first cut from her c-section.

"You got a lot," Zola says, audibly shocked as she stares at Meredith's abdomen.

"I know, but they don't hurt at all," she says, keeping her shirt held up so Zola can get a good look. "And I don't mind having them."

When Zola reaches out and touches her appy scar, it gives her goosebumps. Although it has faded over the years, she can still kind of see the dots on either side of the incision line to mark where the thread went in and out.

"Stitches for Mommy too?" Zola asks.

"I did, but when they got taken out, they left these scars," Meredith explains.

"Cause of the slide?" Zola asks curiously.

Meredith smiles. "No, these aren't from the slide," she says. "These are from surgeries I had to have. That happens sometimes."

"No surgery for me," Zola says, shaking her head.

"I know. You didn't need it, but I had to get my liver fixed, and my appendix fixed, and this is from when Bailey was born," she says, tracing a finger over each of her scars. "And they needed to do some stitches after my surgeries, so now I have scars."

"Oh," Zola says.

"It's ok to have scars," Meredith assures her. "Scars just mean you're tough and brave. Me and you are survivors."

"Survivors?" Zola asks. It's a new word for her, Meredith is pretty sure, but it's one she is all too happy for Zola to learn.

"Yeah," Meredith says. She leans over and kisses the top of Zola's head, just above her new scar. "It means we can do anything."

* * *

Later, after dinner has been cleaned up and the kids' pajamas have been put on, Zola has been told that she can play quietly until bedtime, so she has occupied herself with her kitchen set while Derek walks a fussy Bailey around the kitchen.

In the meantime, Meredith sits at the counter and looks up flights to Connecticut for the week of Christmas. They've flown out there a few times, but this will be the first time they've done it with both kids. Even though Zola's birthday is in January, it'll still be traveling with two kids under three. Across the country. During the holidays. Needless to say, they are both a little stressed out about it.

Derek paces around the kitchen, holding Bailey closely against his chest with his head on his shoulder. Bailey has eaten a good dinner, and they have already felt around his mouth for the hint of teeth trying to poke through, so their only explanation for his fussiness is that he's overtired. As soon as they settle on the flights they're taking, it'll be bedtime for the little guy.

"So we could take the red-eye and with the time difference, get in at a decent time in the morning," Meredith announces, looking up from her laptop. "On Sunday or Monday."

Derek grimaces. "I don't know about the red-eye."

The very thought of it causes his imagination to run wild with horror scenarios. He recalls every bad flight he has ever taken, every screaming baby, every parent who has knocked against his elbow and knee while they walked their kid up and down the aisle in a desperate attempt to make them sleep. Zola is a pretty good flier—not great, but definitely survivable—but Bailey is an unknown quantity. And if his intermittent fussiness, like what he is experiencing now, is any indication, Derek is prepared to stay on the West Coast for the next five to ten years.

Meredith seems to anticipate his concern, and says, "Hopefully the kids will sleep the whole time anyway."

"Yeah, but if they don't, everyone else on the flight is going to want to kill us," he says. He pats Bailey's back and makes shushing noises in his ear as he takes another lap around the kitchen counter.

"What about Monday during the day then?" Meredith suggests. "We could get in by the afternoon."

Derek shakes his head. "If we get in too early, then we're going to get roped into going to this thing at Kate's."

Meredith gives him a puzzled look, and he realizes that they have avoided this event thus far. So far, it's been great to get out of it, but the flip side is that because they've missed it so many times, Kate will definitely force them into going this year.

"They do this thing where everybody comes over the day before Christmas Eve and bakes and drinks," he continues, "And it's a lot of people we went to high school with. It's a nightmare, honestly."

"Kate is still friends with people from high school?" Meredith asks incredulously.

"She and Joe have been dating since they were seventeen," he reminds her.

"Right."

"Anyway, I'd like to avoid that if at all possible."

What goes without saying is that everyone at that party knew him when he was fifteen. They all remember his afro, and his acne, and his band uniform. And now that he is a neurosurgeon, many of them take some measure of comfort for themselves in reminding him that he used to be a band geek.

"Don't you want to show your sister's friends that you have a hot wife and cute kids now?" Meredith asks, sensing why he is objecting, though she of all people doesn't need to be talked out of going to awkward family gatherings.

"Not really," he says. "Then it moves from reminiscing to expressing total shock that I _have_ a hot wife and cute kids now."

Meredith laughs. "Ok, well if we fly out on Tuesday during the day, then we'll avoid reliving your awkward high school experience _and_ we'll bypass a possible mutiny on the plane," she says. "But we'll also miss most of Christmas Eve. So what's better? Red-eye with possible meltdowns or reminiscing and small talk over pie and beer?"

Derek sighs and looks at Meredith from across the counter. "What about another airline?"

"Derek!" Meredith says in exasperation, but as Bailey's fussing turns from whimpers to cries, she turns her attention to her son instead. "What's the matter, B? Huh?"

"Mommy, I want him to stop crying," Zola says. She has left her toys in the living room and come into the kitchen to investigate for herself.

"I know, Zo," Meredith says, "But he's uncomfortable, and that's the only way he can tell us."

"What's wrong, buddy?" Derek asks, tilting his head close to Bailey and patting his back. He shifts Bailey in his arms, and that might do the trick. His cries die down a little, but as Derek rounds the countertop again, to the side where Meredith and Zola are, Meredith's voice takes on a new sense of urgency.

"Derek?" she says. "Derek, blow out."

"What?" he says, but then he looks down. Bailey has indeed blown out his diaper, and poop is spreading across his body, and seeping onto Derek's shirt as well. "Oh, come on, B."

Meredith seems to be biting back a laugh as he extends the baby outward, holding him at arm's length. He may be biased, because he is the one covered in poop right now, but this is by far the most disgusting mess that either one of his children has ever created. But of course, Bailey has stopped crying.

"Well, now you're happy, aren't you?" Derek says, and he can't help but laugh as Bailey stares back at him contentedly.

"Yuck, there's poop everywhere!" Zola shouts. "Bailey!"

"I know, babies do that sometimes," Meredith tells her. "Pretty gross, huh? Can you help Mommy and Daddy and go get Bailey's wipes and a new diaper for him?"

Zola looks all too happy to get out of there. She runs down the hall, and turns the corner into Bailey's room.

Meredith turns back to Derek. "Put him in the sink. I'll hose him down."

In this moment, Derek is just thankful that they've already loaded the dishwasher. He plops Bailey in the kitchen sink, and holds him in place while Meredith uses a pair of kitchen shears to cut his pajamas off him.

"So that's the end of that outfit," Derek says, still holding an extremely messy Bailey upright in the sink.

"Yeah," Meredith says, "And how much do you care about that shirt?"

"Not enough to get poop in my hair trying to take it off," he says, and the next thing he knows, Meredith is cutting his shirt off too.

She balls all of the dirty clothes up with the dirty diaper and throws them in the kitchen trash. Leaning around Bailey, she washes her hands, and then gives the baby a good look.

"Look at him," she says with a laugh. "He literally has a shit-eating grin right now. Are you proud of yourself?"

Bailey flaps his arms in delight, and Derek can't help but grin too. He holds Bailey up a little higher so Meredith can start to clean him off. The baby bounces in his father's arms and laughs while Meredith takes the spray nozzle and hoses him down. This seems to be the most fun Bailey has had in a long time.

"Bailey," Derek says, shaking his head. "You seem like you're feeling better."

"Well, now we know," Meredith says. "If he starts fussing like that, just beware. This might be coming. Right, B?"

Bailey just laughs again. Once they have gotten him relatively clean, Derek says, "Why don't you change him and put him down? I'll disinfect the sink and take out the trash."

Meredith scoops the wet baby into her arms without a towel, kisses his cheeks, and says, "Come on, pooper."

Derek laughs along with Bailey, but before Meredith can take him into his bedroom, Zola returns with a box of wipes and a diaper in her hand.

She stops in her tracks and stares at Derek. "You got a scar too?" she asks.

Derek shoots Meredith a look. Zola has seen him without a shirt countless times, and she has never mentioned his scar at all. Before now, he wasn't sure she even knew what a scar was, but now she's staring at his chest, and she definitely knows and recognizes it on him. It makes him feel slightly, inexplicably, anxious.

"She was upset about her head," Meredith says. She shifts Bailey to her hip, and looks back at Derek, unsure if she should apologize. "I showed her mine."

"Oh," he says. "Yeah, I have one too, Zo."

"You had surgery too?" she asks. "With stitches?"

"Yeah, I did," he replies softly.

"Why?"

Her question makes him think of another thing that he'll never, ever tell Zola: one of the only other times he has ever felt absolutely terrified, when he himself was shot. He'll never tell her about how hard his back hit the hospital's tile floor when he fell. His gurgling cough, something he had heard before. Meredith's firm pressure on his chest. The weeks and weeks of recovery. The pulling of this scar whenever he moved.

Instead, all he says is, "I had an accident. I had to get my heart fixed."

"Like your daddy?" Zola asks.

* * *

While Derek puts Zola to bed, Meredith has moved beyond airline reservations and is returning emails and beginning to shop for Christmas gifts from the comfort of the couch. Derek is in Zola's bedroom for quite awhile, and Meredith is sure that Zola has somehow gotten him to agree to read her way more stories than she would otherwise get. She has been meaning to talk to him about this, how she has noticed that Zola is getting smarter and that she tries to force them into good cop and bad cop roles sometimes.

When Derek finally emerges, he stands in front of her and says, with so much exhaustion in his voice, "She asked me if I was going to die like my dad."

Just like that, answering emails is finished, Christmas shopping is finished—everything is finished except for this moment. She closes the laptop and sets it on the coffee table, and stares up at Derek. It takes her a second to say something because, though she can clearly see the pain in Derek's eyes, she is also worried about her little girl, who may think her daddy will not come home one day.

"What did you say?" she finally asks, as evenly as she can.

"I said no," Derek says with a sigh, as he sits down next to her. "What else could I say?"

"Was she ok?"

She can't hear Zola crying, or even just talking to herself for that matter, but it's a struggle to resist the urge to go to her right now and hold her in her arms.

"I think so," Derek says. "She closed her eyes and let me leave."

Meredith nods, and lets the breath she's been holding go. She watches Derek stare straight ahead, drained and expressionless. At times like these, she struggles to know what to do, or what to say. Derek never talks about his father, and even now, when she is confident that she is the one who knows him better than anyone else in the world, there is still so much that she does not understand.

"You want to go to your family's for Christmas, right?" she asks.

He looks up. "What? Yeah. Why?"

"I don't know," she says. Before, you just didn't seem like you wanted to fly out there. And the whole thing with your dad." She trails off for a second before assuring him, "We don't have to go if you don't want to."

"I want to," he says almost immediately. She doesn't respond right away while she tries to gauge whether or not he's telling the whole truth. She knows he doesn't want to disappoint his family, especially after all he's asked of them in the past year, but more than that—and she's sure about this because she's a pro at it herself—he doesn't want to let on that anything might be wrong. The easiest way to do that is to just keep going as if nothing is.

"I want to," he says again, much more emphatically.

"Ok," she agrees, "We'll go."

They settle into each other's arms on the couch. His arms feel strong around her, and she lays an arm across his stomach and rests her head on his shoulder. Like this, they relax quietly for a few minutes, just enjoying the rare and absolute silence.

But it doesn't take long for him to ask her, "You want to go, right?"

"Yeah," she says. "Your family should meet Bailey. Plus Thanksgiving is probably going to be a disaster, and they should have one normal holiday."

Keeping him talking seems to snap him out of his initial shock, because his voice actually perks up and she can almost hear him smiling even though she isn't looking at him. "If you're going to my family hoping for normal," he says, "You're going to be sorely disappointed."

Meredith laughs, and replies, "Well, _more_ normal then."

Derek grows quiet again. "Zola's going to ask more about my dad. Mom has pictures of him everywhere."

"She saw the one your mom sent?"

"Yeah."

Meredith doesn't know what to do about this, because he's right. While Meredith herself really does not want Zola and Bailey to grow up in a house that keeps a lot of secrets, she worries that some of it might be inevitable. Chris Shepherd is almost as much a mystery to Meredith as he is to Zola, and Meredith has tried hard over the years—especially during the few times that they actually have visited with Derek's family—not to pry out of respect for Derek. She can't help but wonder, though, about the man who raised her husband. She is sure that knowing Chris is the way to burrow more into the heart of who Derek really is.

And if _she's_ curious, she knows Zola must be. She remembers when Zola learned that Carolyn was actually Derek's mother, and that's what a Nana was, her father's mother. Zola was equal parts confused and amused by this fact for days, so it's only natural that she would wonder about the man who looks so much like Derek. Zola is young enough that she is basically without a filter, and they have always encouraged her curiosity, but her questions are getting more complicated and they can't keep her from asking.

Meredith pushes away from him a little, and turns so she can look into his eyes. "Are you ok?" she finally asks.

"Yes!" he cries defensively.

"Ok, well you just seem not ok," she says matter-of-factly. She is fully out of his arms now and sitting up straight. "You never talk about your dad and it's been a lot of him for one day."

"I'm ok. It's just been," he hesitates, "Unexpected. And she asks a lot of questions."

Meredith nods. "We don't have easy answers to give," she says quietly.

Derek gives a little, joyless laugh, agreeing with her. "I didn't think I would tell them any of it until they were older. I'll never tell them some of it."

"I've told myself the same thing a million times."

This part, she completely understands, because she knows there are questions she will have to answer someday too. She may have to tell her children about things that are embarrassing or painful or shameful. Things that she has done that she is not proud of. People she pushed out of her life, or who pushed her out of theirs. People she couldn't save. She'll have to answer questions about Ellis and Thatcher and Addison and Lexie. And she'll want to hide most of it, because of what it says about her and what it might do to her children to hear it. She will want to leave out the parts about the boys and the tequila. And the parts about the bomb, and the ice cold water of the Puget Sound, and the gun, and the plane. If she ever has to, it will be hard to talk about self-doubt and grief and terror. And she thought she had more time, because her oldest is not even three years old yet. But Zola is already asking where Derek's daddy is.

"No easy answers," Derek echoes, almost as if he has a sense of what she might be thinking.

Meredith sighs and nods, and sinks back into his arms, seeking his comfort. He accepts her, and kisses the top of her head. They let some time go by when neither says anything and despite the anxiety of parenting, of choosing big things for someone else, she feels better to be in it with him. There was a time, not so long ago, that she would feel alone with thoughts like these, even in his arms, but she doesn't anymore because she is sure that he understands.

"I did invite Richard to Thanksgiving," she finally says, wordlessly asking him to move the conversation to a lighter place again. "If he gets discharged in time."

"Really?" he asks.

She shrugs. "This is why your family seems normal to me."

He laughs. A real laugh this time, albeit a quick one. "Normal isn't all it's cracked up to be, Meredith."

"Still. That's why we have to do Christmas in Connecticut. Snow, and cousins, and pie. It'll be good for them. Thanksgiving is going to be my mother's ex, who thought it would be a good idea to give me power of attorney, and a bunch of broken-up couples."

"You invited Cristina then?"

"No. I meant Callie and Arizona."

"You should invite her," Derek urges, "You should make up."

"We're just in a bad place right now," Meredith says.

That place is somewhere between shock and anger and pain. At first, it was equal parts shock and anger, a reaction to what she views as Cristina's selfishness, but now, as it goes on, pain is starting to slip in.

"I don't know," she says, "Maybe this is how we're going to be from now on. Things are different now."

"She's still your person," Derek says, rubbing her arm.

"Derek, my person would support me, and help me. My person wouldn't make my life harder," she snaps. She has gotten at some of these feelings since the whole thing started, and expressed some of them to Derek, but it's a little easier today to assign a word to it: betrayal. It may not be what it really is, or what it may look like to someone else, but it's what it feels like to her.

"I feel like she doesn't have my back," she says, before adding quietly, "My research project is going nowhere."

He kisses her temple and inhales deeply, what he once called breathing her in. Her hair is dirty though, and probably doesn't smell anything like what he hopes it will smell like.

"You're a good doctor, Meredith."

She appreciates him saying it, but she knows that's not it. Well, it's not all of it. Because she knows, deep down in the core of her, that she is a good doctor. But nobody else knows it. And she can't figure out how to be a good doctor, and do all of the other stuff too. Even with Derek taking a step back and making a professional sacrifice for her, and even with him supporting her and loving her more than she ever thought she was going to be supported or loved by any man, it still feels overwhelming sometimes, like she grasps for things and never really reaches them.

"I can't figure out how to make it all work," she admits.

"You're doing it though," he assures her, once again giving her more than she feels like she deserves.

She sighs and burrows into him. He is so good at making her feel better. Despite everything that is happening with work and with Cristina, it at least feels good to know that with him, there is peace and comfort and understanding.

"I just don't want to be my mother," she says quietly.

He doesn't say anything, but when a moment or two goes by and he still doesn't respond, she tilts her head to stare up at him. He doesn't meet her eye right away. "You know what I mean?" she asks, when he looks at her.

It still takes him a second to say something, and when he does, it isn't anything she was expecting.

"No," he says. "All I want to do is be my dad."

Her heart breaks for him. She knows grief very well, but not like this. Even though his arms are wrapped around her, she wraps hers more tightly around him. He looks at her, and though he doesn't have tears in his eyes, the exhaustion scares her.

He has never said these words to her before. He always seems to just know what to do with Zola and Bailey without really trying, and she always assumed that that is just because he is a good man and because he loves them so much. Now, she realizes in an instant that, while those things are also true, he must always be trying to follow his father's example.

"I love you," she says. She kisses him deeply, because it might be the only way to tell him the whole of it. How much she loves him, and needs him. How good he is.

She knows a little something about trying to live up to expectations, and this might be the only comfort she can give him.

When they come apart, she tells him again. "I love you," she says, and he nods in response.

Then she adds something else—because, besides "I love you," it's the truest thing she can say; because she couldn't do this without him and what's more, she wouldn't have wanted to; because she knows intimately what other children's lives are like and, even though sometimes she is frustrated and lost, she is thankful that her children will never have the father that she had.

"You are everything I wanted for them."


End file.
